Stateless (6 page)

But if Stalin needed to be told something, often for the third or fourth time, Beria would have to pretend that the question had never been asked before, and would answer with enthusiasm, praising the leader for his perception. On occasion, if he was lucky, Stalin only wanted his advice on something, or confirmation of an order, and then he'd be dismissed, always with thanks. These were some of the better scenarios of how the meeting might go. Sometimes, on his way to Stalin's offices, Beria would stop off at the GUM Department Store, opposite the Kremlin walls in Red Square. There, he'd be shown into a private room, where his usual Georgian vodka would be ready on ice, along with some Beluga caviar. But this time, he obeyed the call of his master.

As he was ushered immediately into Stalin's offices he found the leader sitting at his desk. Beria tried to see what he was looking at, but the General Secretary's eyes were dead.
Expressionless. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. His entire face was like a death mask. It only moved when he spoke, and then his lips barely enunciated the words.

Beria sat and pondered Stalin as though Medusa the Gorgon was on the opposite side of the desk, waiting on his master to acknowledge his presence. Yet Stalin sat reading, making notes. Then he looked up and out of the window, staring around the room, looking through Beria, not at him, as though he were invisible. Did ten minutes pass, or an hour?

Beria surreptitiously glanced through the window at the onion domes of St Basil's Cathedral. It gave him comfort. Not because of any sentimentality for his Russian Orthodox upbringing but rather because of his latest stratagem. He'd spent many weeks going over maps of Palestine and the entire area of Arabia, reading the documents of the Jews and Arabs who lived there and the details of the British mandate that enabled the effete government in London to rule the region.

And in his readings and study he'd been surprised to learn that the very church just across the way, the church in the grounds of the Red Square and others in the centre of Moscow, were viewed by the Russian priesthood as the equivalent of the holy city of Jerusalem. They even believed that St Basil's Cathedral was the very Temple of Solomon itself. This seemed an odd idea to him. Did these idiot priests have any idea just how far the sun-drenched white stone of Jerusalem was from freezing soil and the iron sky of a wintery Moscow? But how much would the stupid Muscovite priests, still faithful to the god banished from Russia by Marx, love to be part of a global plan where Moscow would become the new Jerusalem?

Eventually, waiting for Stalin to acknowledge his presence in the office became too much and Beria coughed apologetically. It was a cautious cough, not enough to be heard, but enough to make a disturbance in the funereal quiet of Stalin's office.

Suddenly aware of the disturbance, Stalin stopped writing, and looked slowly up at Beria, sitting opposite him across the desk. ‘Good afternoon, Lavrentiy Pavlovich. I've kept you waiting. I had to finish this communication. Now, you wanted to see me.'

Beria swallowed though Stalin's forgetfulness and confusion were not unusual. The General Secretary had summoned him, but in the half-hour it took for him to arrive, he'd forgotten the reason he'd sent for Beria, or seemingly that he summoned him at all. But Beria made no indication of this and pressed ahead.

‘Comrade Chairman, if you remember, you and I had previously discussed the use of Jewish operatives in Palestine. To this end I have begun the process and brought in the potentials. As of yesterday, I am delighted to inform you that the last Jewish spy to be trained has just been put into place. She's a very young woman, little more than a girl, but utterly brilliant. A real asset. Once trained, Operation Outgrowth can begin.'

‘What?'

Surely he remembered. It had been discussed last week. Beria spoke again. ‘Operation Outgrowth. The plan that you approved yourself last year. We've been searching for the right personnel, and during this year we've identified them. Now we've drawn them together. Twelve of them in total. Like Jesus' disciples. All young Jews, utterly loyal to Mother Russia, but gifted in the language and cultural knowledge of the Jews.'

Stalin continued to stare at Beria, who suddenly found the heat in the room overwhelming, and began to sweat. Was it all going wrong? Why didn't Stalin react? Instead of saying anything, Stalin's face was still like a mask. Beria couldn't tell whether or not he understood, or agreed, or was about to explode with rage.

Nervously, Beria continued. ‘Allow me to detail the context for your approval. You suggested that as the war against the
Nazis was at last turning in our favour, it was time to look beyond the boundaries of the glorious Soviet motherland, and think of a new Europe without the boundaries which were in place before the madman Hitler's adventure. We know, when Germany is defeated, that we might absorb Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the petty principalities of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Albania and Romania and so on. But there is also the matter of our navy . . .'

Beria looked at Stalin expectantly, but the Chairman's face remained like granite. Did he understand? Did he remember? It was impossible to read Stalin's mind. He might be known to be forgetful – except where his enemies were concerned – but he was also cunning and guileful and so deadly dangerous.

Again, Beria swallowed before speaking. ‘Might I respectfully remind you, Comrade General Secretary, about the outcome of the Moscow Conference which we've just concluded. This did more than agree on an allied pact against the Nazis. Britain's Anthony Eden, the American Cordell Hull and our own Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov all agreed on ways to bring this war to a just and glorious conclusion. But what we must also prepare for is the disposition of the world after Hitler and his fascists are destroyed and become a footnote in Russia's long and glorious history.

‘The British and Americans think that they'll be able to acquire territory, and so we must be prepared to expand before them. And in this you believed it was the sands of Persia, Arabia and the oil that lies beneath that should be our focus. But you also thought much further; it was your idea to create a permanent base for our Soviet navy in the warm waters of the eastern Mediterranean.'

He hoped the phrase would alert Stalin's memory. He waited for some response, but Stalin continued to stare at him. He wondered whether the man had fallen asleep with his eyes
open, knowing that Stalin slept one or two hours a night and catnapped during the day.

Beria persisted. ‘So that we can remove our navy permanently from the Black Sea and base it in the open waters of the Mediterranean . . . so that we're never again bottled in by Turkey.'

Stalin didn't blink, frown, or move a muscle of his face. For Beria, it was like talking to a brick wall.

Beria now felt desperate. ‘Comrade, when Russia is victorious in this evil fascist war, the time is ripe for us to make great gains in the territory of the Middle East. For its oil. For the warm-water port that Mother Russia has always been denied. Palestine is a hotbed of internecine warfare, with Jews fighting Arabs fighting the British. We know that the Mufti of Palestine has allied himself with Hitler, so when Hitler is defeated, the Jews will fight the Arabs. And both will no doubt turn on the British. This is a chaos we – ' Beria caught himself, ‘this is a chaos you clearly saw our ability to exploit.'

Stalin nodded. A nod so small and subtle, many would have not seen it at all. But Beria saw it.

‘Comrade Chairman, this is how I . . . you . . . proposed that we use our Fifth Column Jewish spies within Palestine. To lever our influence and create a Jewish communist puppet state and satellite of Moscow when Palestine gains its independence from its British colonisers, which will give us a warm-water port in the Mediterranean for our glorious navy.'

Stalin suddenly, to Beria's surprise, came to life, stood from his chair, and walked over to a huge map of the world hanging on the wall of his office. The moment he stood, Beria sprang out of his chair, and stood to attention. Stalin said nothing but simply regarded the map, silently inviting Beria to continue. Beria walked over and tried to make himself slightly smaller than Stalin, who himself was short; there were no men taller
than Stalin in his command structure. All the tall men had been removed.

Beria looked at the map, and cleared his throat. ‘Here,' he said, pointing to the Black Sea and the port of Sevastopol, ‘is where the Russian fleet is currently moored. But we are in danger of our fleet being locked up from winter ice here in the north . . .' Beria pointed to the Russian Baltic ports on the border of the Arctic. ‘And on the other side of Russia,' he said, moving his hand over the enormous expanse of the nation to the far eastern city of Vladivostok, ‘the ports are frozen six months of the year. And while our navy is moored in the Black Sea, it's in danger of being bottled up by the Turks in Istanbul. Operation Outgrowth is a concept that aims to deliver us a permanent warm-water port in the Mediterranean where we can come and go at our will. Our Russian navy will be a foil to the US navy, which feels it can roam the globe freely, as it will be to the British and the French and whoever else underestimates our strength.'

Slowly Stalin nodded once more and said, ‘It is a good plan and you have understood my directions well.'

‘Thank you, Comrade Chairman.'

It was Beria's plan, one born of a keen intellect for strategy and covert operations. A plan that he had brought to Stalin those many months ago. But he played the part that must be played.

‘The world will come to recognise your genius once our glorious Soviet fleet has sailed out of Sevastopol, and is moored safely in the warm and welcoming waters of Haifa and Jaffa in a new country that will be called Israel.'

Stalin slowly nodded once more and then added, ‘You said something about a girl. What girl?'

Beria was somewhat surprised by the question but quickly responded. ‘We acquired her from her religious school. She
speaks the Jews' language of Hebrew well, and she's intelligent. Very intelligent. And she is . . .' Beria looked for the right word, ‘. . . she's receptive and will be totally, unquestioningly loyal to the State and the Soviet Socialist cause. Once her training is finished, she'll be my thing.'

At this, Stalin raised a thick eyebrow. Beria continued. ‘We're about to begin training her with the other young men and women in weaponry, spycraft, urban warfare, geopolitics and Marxist ideology. Once her training is complete, she'll be deployed into greater Palestine.'

Stalin looked back at the map, then at Beria. He nodded. ‘Yes. Good.' He turned his attention back to the map. ‘Remind me of the location of Jerusalem.'

Central Israel

161 CE

A
bram was exhausted and starving.

The road south from Yavne had taken the lad across the coastal plain which led down to the Mediterranean Sea. Living in the mountainous Galilee, he had never been to the seaside, though from a high hilltop, he'd once spotted the ocean.

Now he was fascinated by its vastness, its constantly changing moods and smells. At daybreak it filled the air with the fresh and perfumed tang of a mountain forest. In the height of the day it was salty and rancid, smelling more like the carcass of a dead animal. Then, as the night fell and the stars flooded the firmament, it smelled like a freshly washed blanket.

For the first few days he had enjoyed these sensations. Through his journey south he had skirted settlements and villages, frightened as much by meeting local villagers as he was of encountering a troop of Roman soldiers. His mind remained fixed on the seal inside his shirt and the city of Jerusalem where he must deliver it. It was a goal that had sustained him on little food, water or sleep. It was what had caused him to become a thief, cause a fire in the High Priest's home, and steal away in
the night. It was what had made him feel suddenly ashamed of who he was.

But after three days of walking, the food he'd stolen from the priest's home was gone. This meant stealing again, this time from an orchard of fruit trees or a field of growing vegetables or gathering God's bounty of free wild berries, mushrooms and other edible produce of a forest. But unlike the Galilee, where Abram knew how to gather supplies and could live for days without meeting another person, the vegetation and bounty of the seashore was strange to him.

So he headed inland and the air grew drier and hotter and his water ran out. Abram lost direction and could not focus his thoughts. His instincts and distrust had him hiding when he saw strangers ahead instead of pleading for help.

And now Abram was near to breaking down. He just needed to rest. Only a morning or two to regain his strength. Simply to lie down in the welcoming grasses to close his eyes and feel God's sun on his face; to sink into sleep and dream about the cool air of the Galilee, the breezes of the mountaintops, the sparkling water, and the joy of hearing his parents' voices.

The sky ahead was bleached white like the bones of a large fish washed up on the shores of the sea. Now his head spun and he smiled, because he was swimming in warm water, refreshing water. He lay down, and closed his eyes as his body was swept away by the warmth of the tide washing over him. He tried to turn his body, but he felt himself sinking further and further into the warm water. He knew he was smiling. He didn't know that he'd collapsed face first into the dirt at the side of the road.